DICT urged to spearhead review, overhaul of SIM Registration Law
THE recent leadership shakeup at the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) should bring about a review of the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) Registration Law amid the unbroken surge in text and online fraud that this new regulation is supposed to overcome, CamSur Rep. LRay Villafuerte has said.
With the assumption of Undersecretary Paul Mercado as officer-in-charge (OIC) of this Department, “the DICT on his (Mercado) watch needs to do a much better job of arresting the unbroken surge in text and online scams, which the government was supposed to get rid of with the enactment of RA (Republic Act No.) 11934,” said Villafuerte, one of the authors of this SIM Registration Act of 2022.
“For the government to get RA 11934 right this time, Mercado, as the new man at the helm of the DICT, needs to give priority to revisiting and overhauling this seemingly ineffectual regulation by working with its CICC (Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center) along with the Congress, NTC (National Telecommunications Commission), NBI (National Bureau of Investigation), PNP (Philippine National Police) and other pertinent institutions on tweaking this 2022 law for a more synergetic and effective effort at combating text and online scams,” Villafuerte said.
Among the possible amendments that could be considered for a possible amendatory law in the Congress is the requirement for the mandatory appearance of persons registering their respective SIM numbers, in the same way that people are required to personally appear before the Land Transportation Office (LTO) in getting their drivers’ licenses or before the NBI when they apply for clearances, said Villafuerte, once a three-term governor and now president of the National Unity Party (NUP).
Other possible amendments could be, said Villafuerte, limiting the number of valid government-issued identification (ID) cards that registrants can present, requiring agencies with accredited IDs for registration to put up platforms where the public telecommunications entities (PTEs) can validate the IDs of registrants, and authorizing the NTC to regulate or limit the number of SIM cards that people can sign up with the PTEs.
Such amendments to toughen the Sim Registration law are needed to check text and online scams, he said, given that RA 11934’s penalties of prison terms of up to 6 years and a cash fine of up to P4 million have not deterred unscrupulous persons from scamming people via text and online fraud.
Earlier this March, President Marcos named Mercado, who at that time was DOTC undersecretary for special concerns, as this Department’s OIC, following the resignation of Secretary Ivan John Uy for a still undisclosed reason.
Villafuerte said that the Congress wrote the law in 2022 on the government’s belief that it could put an end to text and online scams by requiring everyone to register their SIM cards with the PTEs.
Our three PTEs are Smart Communications Inc., Globe Telecom Inc. and Dito Telecommunity Corp.
Malacañang Palace, through Undersecretary Claire Castro of the Presidential Communications Office (PCO), has expressed support for any move to review and amend this law to ensure a more effective way to curb illicit digital activities.
‘It (law) needs to be amended,” said Castro in noting that the registration of SIM cards must be done in person, similar to applications for NBI clearances.
“When you get an NBI clearance, you do it in person. We can properly register our SIM cards so that we can avoid these scams. Nowadays, anyone can just buy a SIM card, they can buy anywhere and they sell their identity, it would be hard for us to eradicate crime if this happens,” Castro said.
Castro said persons are also able to register their SIM cards even when they present bogus personal details, and could buy and register multiple SIM cards and then sell them to syndicates.
“That’s what we need to fix. So, SIM registration should be personal. Even those who used the pictures of monkeys were able to register,” Castro said. “The same issues will persist if we do it online.
Anyone can register.”
In a congressional hearing in 2023, an NBI official said that to test the SIM registration system, the bureau was able to register a SIM card using a fake ID with the photo of a smiling monkey.
The PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) arrested last January two Chinese nationals suspected of selling pre-registered SIM cards, seizing 4,000 SIMs suspected of being intended for criminal activities like online phishing and romance scams.
Scammers have also been using not just SIM cards but also Internet-based chat apps like Viber, Messenger, Telegram and WhatsApp to send text or message scams; or mimicking the names of banks, e-wallets or other legitimate companies to send clickable links to scams to unsuspecting targets.
According to the DICT, about 10.8 million cellular phone numbers have been blacklisted and another 2.3 million SIM numbers have been deactivated in 2024 alone on suspicion that these were being used for cyber fraud.
CICC executive director Alexander Ramos said, “We have been receiving a litany of complaints from the public that they continue to receive unwanted text messages either offering them loans, online gambling, cryptocurrency investments and job offers from unknown persons.”
In a statement, the Philippine Chamber of Telecommunication Operators (PCTO) president and Globe general counsel Froilan Castelo said last year that cybercriminals have circumvented the online walls put up by PTEs to prevent text scams from circulating within their networks by sending out messaging scams to their targets through chat apps and over-the-top channels that are no longer within the bounds of the filters of these telecommunications companies.
The PCTO also warned about the use of fake cell towers that target subscribers in specific areas, which enables cybercriminals to intercept cellular signals, connect to mobile numbers, and send out text scams.
Villafuerte said that, “Our authorities need to double down on their anti-cybercrime efforts, and it is time to give them new and better tools to prove their true mettle as law enforcers by taking down perpetrators of text and online scams.”
He added that, “These scammers should be flushed out once and for all and, more importantly, slapped with the penalties due violators under RA 11934 and RA 10175, or the “Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.”
RA 11934 imposes a cash fine of P300,000 and/or a prison term of six months to six years for SIM registration violations.
RA 10175, meanwhile, slaps penalties ranging from P50,000 to P1 million and/or imprisonment of either one month and one day to 6 months or 6 years and one day to 12 years on cybercrimes like illegal access to or interception of computer data, cyber-squatting, computer-related fraud, forgery or identity theft, unsolicited commercial communications to sell or advertise products without prior affirmative consent of recipients, and cybersex.
